IT'S DARK IN HERE...

 It's Dark in Here

I am writing these poems
From inside a lion,
And it's rather dark in here.
So please excuse the handwriting
Which may not be too clear.
But this afternoon by the lion's cage
I'm afraid I got too near.
And I'm writing these lines
From inside a lion,
And it's rather dark in here.

This funny poem by Shel Silverstein  which I came 

upon this morning in a  pile of notes and clippings  over

 a decade old was in the printing hand of my grand-daughter. 

she had mailed  it to me when she was  about 8 years old.

 She also added her own drawing of a hand with a pen emerging

 from the mouth of a big crouching cat. Even  now I am struck

 by her appreciation of  humor and poetry on full display here.

 And also I have come  to think that  this little rhyme is more 

accurate and  more serious about the  vocation  of the poet

 than  it may seem on first reading. It could be the prologue

 for almost every book of  poetry.

  Poets do often  feel that they are  writing in the dark

 and that is a scary place to be.  

 Also  many  know the creeping unease  of being in a dangerous

place; that sense of how unwelcome are the insights of poets  who

 write  from the heart of a repressive society.  Knowing vaguely

that  we are in a place that could easily devour us if it even

condescended to notice us.

The poet makes constant and unsuccessful raids on

 the inarticulate as TS Eliot described:

 And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—

ENOUGH SAID